Amid The Trees in Park City, A Modern Mountain House Corresponds to Its Setting

It was one of those great, affirming moments,” Vicki Farrar says of a site visit by the architect she and her husband, Dennis, had commissioned to design their house in the mountains of Park City, Utah. Peter Bohlin had flown in from his Pennsylvania office and joined the couple at the project about midway through construction. “He walked around in silence for the longest time, intently staring out at one view, and then another and then another. He was more focused on the outside than on all that was happening inside. Finally, he said so quietly I could just barely hear him, ‘I got it right.’”

Positioning the 12,000-square-foot residence on the densely wooded 13-acre property for optimal outlooks was, Bohlin says, integral to his design. “There was only one way to enter the site because of the steep grade, and the building’s placement was determined by that. I situated it crosswise: the catbird seat for long views east, down through the mountain peaks, as well as for more intimate views of the trees.”

“Marrying wood and steel successfully involves finding a way to combine them when they’re each the most important material for the situation.”

The house is composed of two linear forms that intersect in the primary living spaces and organize around the topography, with a rear volume burrowed into the hillside. Its 90-degree orientation—a “crisscrossing, highly intuitive plan,” in the architect’s words—allows each of the major rooms multiple exposures. (The living room, with its double-height windows, for example, looks into the alpine forest and through the dining room across the Wasatch Valley.) “The spaces at once tell you everything about the world around you,” says Bohlin, whose Wilkes-Barre-based firm, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, is noted for the strong integration of building and landscape.

From a winding drive and semicircular auto court, the second-level main entrance is reached by a bluestone staircase. A slatted wall plane perpendicular to the grain of the house continues through the entrance hall out to a private terrace for the couple, both lawyers. A less formal lower entrance is on the other side of the wall and adjacent to the greenhouse, a projecting griddled-glass structure where Dennis Farrar cultivates orchids. The east-west wing, containing the living and dining area and the master suite, climbs the hillside, while the north-south wing (including the main entrance, guest rooms, kitchen, pool, wine cellar and garage) follows the site’s contour.

The articulation of the house’s steel structure makes a visually commanding narrative. “We used wood in the leg of the L and steel running along the north-south axis,” says project architect George A. Bradley. “The idea behind the steel was to expose it, express it and be honest about its structural role.” Adds Bohlin: “Steel makes perfect sense when you want very slender elements that still work at great strength—and marrying wood and steel successfully involves finding a way to combine them when they’re each the most important material for the situation.”

Wood (Douglas fir rafters and roof decking and western red cedar siding on the exterior and interior walls) is a material “people connect to because, as with stone, they can imagine where it came from,” Bohlin says. “It has emotional and romantic qualities—it tells you about itself.” He used two widths and thicknesses of cedar, varying the scale for subtle differentiation.

“The spaces at once tell you everything about the world around you.”

Stepped lead-coated-copper roofs distinguish the volumes and their hierarchical functions (those over the main entrance and living room are highest) and delimit the intersecting spaces. Steel columns support the roof system except in the living room, which is bisected by a custom steel truss. At its termination, anchoring the living and dining area, is a massive stone fireplace; behind it, a staircase runs from the third-floor master suite to the lower-level exercise room and pool.

The 25-meter lap pool, encased in ceiling-height glass, cantilevers over a seasonal stream at the house’s northernmost end. An acrylic panel extends from the pool bottom to the stainless-steel ceiling, giving the appearance of an infinity edge; the ceiling (“reading like a hologram,” Bohlin observes) reflects the trees, the sky and the water. “Peter has a pool, and his wife swims, so he knows that swimming is both aesthetic and spiritual,” says Vicki Farrar. “He understood that for me the pool would not be simply a utilitarian exercise space but the defining feature of the house.” Bohlin embraced the opportunity: “It let me further blur the line between interior and exterior, while creating some magic in the environment.”